Apocalypse Now reenacted by dummies.. I mean, River of Death (1989)

[Neville]

Well... This has been beyond bizarre.

Just watched Cannon's "River of Death", starring Michael Dudikoff, Donald Pleasence, Robert Vaughn and L.Q. Jones.

The film adapts a novel by Alistair MacLean. MacLean wrote it in his last years and it's utter crap, an adventure film set on the Amazon so badly written the prose seems dictated by a 4-year old. It's that bad.

Anyway, for some reason Cannon bought the rights and the hired some known faces to do a film. The film it's not as bad as the book (they really had to try hard), but it's damn bad too. Basically you got Dudikoff, who deserved better roles (I mean he's likable, and can act far better than many other former stars from Cannon) and the rest of the cast wandering aimlessly through the Amazon river while looking for a lost city, a lost tribe or something. There's also nazis, or former nazis, cannibals, fog, some gunfights and several scenes were everybody double corsses everybody else.

And yes, it's bad. I can deal with hammy acting, bad dialogue and cheesy action, but what really hurts the film are 1) that nothing of interests happens on the first half and 2) that nobody, from writer to directors to actors seem to be sure of what they are doing or why. Nothing makes sense, or leads in a particular direction.

There's one thing I sort of liked though, and it's that the film tries hard to be a B-movie version of "Apocalypse Now", and considering the general lack of talent and low budget they achieve an amusing resemblance in a couple of scenes.

I'd really like to find a good book on cannon, one that covers every film and shootings. Those people were mad, but they made their share of guilty pleasures.